BTC Sessions - NEWS ROUNDUP: Biden Wants Easier Bitcoin Seizure Laws ep299

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

The Biden administration wants to make it easier to seize Bitcoin without due process, Cashapp users can receive lightning payments, conjoined funds used by CCP to pay undercover FBI agent and more on today’s show! 💪 SUPPORT THE SHOW: Shakepay is the easiest way to buy Bitcoin in Canada Sign up now and get $10 free after your first $100 purchase! https://shakepay.me/r/BTCSESSIONS ALSO search/subscribe to Shakepay on YouTube! LEDN Bitcoin backed loans –  get $10 free with a savings balance of $75 or more for 15 consecutive days! https://start.ledn.io/btcsessions Coinkite offers the BEST Bitcoin hardware on the market. Use this link to get 5% off anything in their store: https://store.coinkite.com/promo/BTCSessions BillFodl: get your wallet backups in solid steel. https://privacypros.io/btcsessions Bitrefill: use Bitcoin to purchase gift cards https://www.bitrefill.com/buy/?code=O04UMic9 Like what you see? BITCOIN TIPS: https://strike.me/btcsessions

What's going on, everybody? Welcome to the show. We have news to be chatting about this week. There's a little hiatus in there. I mean, I still crammed in some shows, but I was out of town for a little bit. So it's been about a week since like a live stream. So welcome back.

And very excited to have Nico back to tell us what's been up. Yeah, lots of some interesting stuff going on. Take care of your sats, people. Take care of your sats because people are coming for them. So watch out. We're going to discuss. But nonetheless, this is live.

Anything can happen. I defer to my good friend Bill here. We'll do it live. We'll do it live. Do it live. I'll write it and we'll do it live. The thing sucks. if you have it already, like,

subscribe, share, all those things. They help a ton. They get this content in front of more eyeballs. I am Ben with the BTC sessions. This is your daily session. Before we dive into the news, let's take a look at where we are in the market right now. This is the Clark Moody dashboard.

But always giving me some issues. But Clark has got me covered here. Nonetheless, $410 per coin. A single U.S. dollar will pick you up 4,900 sats. 91.38% of all Bitcoin have been mined. And in terms of these 18 sats for next block, even an hour sitting around 16 sats per bite. Again, if you're going out a little bit further than that, then maybe single digits will do you just fine. Shout out to sponsor the show. Coin kite. These guys are awesome. My favorite hardware. God, I've just got so much coin kite stuff. The Mark 4, the cold card mark four, is an absolute beast. There's so many awesome features in it. And they keep adding more. They just got that NFC functionality in with Nunchuk wallet. All kinds of great stuff out of them. Of course, the open dimes. I just finally did a video on the block clock.

I dropped that earlier this week. Talk about that later. But the micro and the mini are are awesome. Just one of my favorite things on my shelves. Anyways, if you're looking for some awesome Bitcoin gear, head over to coin kite.com. Use code BTC sessions for 5% off everything in the store. ShakePay.com, if you're in Canada, easy way to be stacking. Sats, the easiest, dare I say. You can e-transfer in and out. There are no deposit or withdrawal fees, including when you withdraw Bitcoin to your own custody, which you should absolutely do. And they encourage. there's a thin spread when you get in there and if you sign up with the link down below

and you purchase your first hundred bucks for the Bitcoin, 10 bucks for free. Same deal if you share your link and others do the same and they'll get 10 bucks as well. You can shake your phone every single day for free sats. They've got their Sats back visa card. They've got their shake paid program. They've got all kinds of different savings programs

or you're in additional Sats. They're just doing everything over there. If you like Sats, shake pay is the place to go. So check them out. Link is down below. if you want that 10 bucks. Leaden.io, you can use your Bitcoin for a ton of different stuff.

I've been using these guys for years now, actually. Maricio, one of the co-founders, is an absolute legend. But nonetheless, you can do a lot of different things here. If you're in a pinch, like I have been from time to time, and it's kind of a cash flow thing and you need dollars, but you don't want to sell Bitcoin. You can deposit here, get a loan of dollars to your bank account within 24 hours, pay back the dollars, get back the dollars,

get back the same amount of Bitcoin. They have savings free Bitcoin and USDC with quarterly third-party audits in which you can verify that your holdings were part of the audit, which is sorely needed. So they do have a proof of reserves there. On top of that,

they also have their Bitcoin-backed mortgages, their B2X offering, tons of awesome stuff. Hit them up at start.ledon.io-BTC sessions. And if you sign up and fund your account, you get $10 for free. Bit refill. awesome, awesome tool for me, especially living on Bitcoin.

But you can basically get any gift card to your heart desires with Bitcoin, on chain, and via the Lightning Network. You earn Sats back as you shop, more Sats back through the referral program. You can do all kinds of things like top up your phone, get inbound lightning channels. And if you're in the U.S., you can pay your bills and live on a Bitcoin standard. So don't sleep on them, check them out. Bitrefill.com.

Link is below. And finally, if you're backing up any important Bitcoin Wall, it. Steel. Steel is the way to go. Not paper. I'm not a fan of paper. It's, it's weak. It's fiat. It burns in a fire. It water washes away your seed phrase. So don't be another statistic. Keep your sat safe. Get some peace of mind. Again, the bill follow over at privacyprose.io slash BTC sessions for a little deal. And with that, before we bring in Nico, let's just do a quick round of shoutouts to anybody hitting the helipad boost tracker if you're listening on fountain or perhaps breeze streaming stats to the pod. Cryosats obviously peppering the pod with

sats as per usual. Michael with some bulls there but Zika boy Ben the two of us will never know where have you been? I was in Charlotte, North Carolina for Halloween and it was fantastic. But I'm back now. Don't worry. Thanks for all the you great content. from anonymous user. Again, Michael, in a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act, keep up the great work. Thanks, man. Sat-Stacker, love the podcast, Zika Boy. So now Hoddlemont has dropped the mic.

Can we all call fake Toshi a cunt? Yes, yes, you can. Again, anonymous user, Denver Realtor here, who also bought, one quarter of a cow from the beef initiative. I'm currently unable to accept Bitcoin because of title companies. What I am doing is giving open dimes as closing gifts so my clients can get a percentage back of non-KYC Bitcoin. That is awesome, man.

Keep that up. That's really, really cool. And I'm super stoked that you're on it with the Beef Initiative. I got to meet Texas Slim down in Charlotte just this past weekend. Dude is a beast. Awesome. There was a, the, they had a big beef dinner and everything. It was incredible.

Anyways, I love it. I love to hear it. Bitcoin Grandma says, thanks so much. Grumpy Strawberry says, what are your privacy thoughts on linking K.C and non-KYC wallets to your node? Well, your node is the one that's verifying the transactions for yourself. So the node itself isn't really of consequence. But if you commingle those coins, then you're effectively doxing your non-KYC coins.

So coin join everything, but especially coin join your KYC stuff to avoid those situations. We got some corn from cryosats again. And finally, second breakfast says, once we fix the tax situation when spending Bitcoin, circular economies will grow overnight. People would rather hoddle than figure out how much they owe the tax man.

Go to El Salvador, man. Go to El Salvador. Anyways, enough of that let's get nigo in here dude it's good to see you how you been good to see you too i think we might all end up moving to salvador i think so i think so yeah everybody's looking at that i don't know how they're gonna i mean like if i'm going and buying a coffee and stuff like that like it's i mean they did hire a ton of extra agents maybe they will be kicking in my door from my latte. Dude, it's, man, it's, it's, it's the separation of money and state, bro. Like they,

they, it's like to like the old system is just slowly dissipating, slowly dying. This new systems coming in and then they're just scrambling trying to figure out how to, you know, just keep that control over people with, with money, man. And, and I, I know I plug this all the time. The sovereign individual nailed it. Like, he was so, They, it was two people. They were so spot on, bro. Yeah, I agree. Oh, I almost forgot.

I got to, I got to do the, there we go. Much better sessions. Simply sessions. That's right, man. So tell us what's been going on this week, man. I got your screen here ready to go. But yeah, what's, before we do that, I posted this clip. And it went viral.

And it is so important. and it explains exactly what has happened these last 10 years. And remember, guys, Bitcoin was born on the heels of the financial crisis. And this is Ed Dodd. He is a former Black Rock portfolio manager. And I've never seen a better explanation. All right, here we go. And the financial crisis, the central banks working in conjunction with the governments

have basically created a zombie economy globally. And those who got wealthy were those who were closest to the printing machine. C-suite executives, hedge fund managers, asset managers, real estate developers. But if you were in the real economy doing real things, you've been falling behind for the last 12 years. There's been a game afoot and the game is coming to an end. And all you need to understand to see what's going on is the central bankers and politicians will use every excuse to blame what's going. going to come on that rather than themselves. And the blame lies at their feet, bottom line.

Wow. Nailed it. Holy shit. Dave me chills. Yeah. I mean, it's, this is what you hear in, in Bitcoiners circles, right? Like, I think we've kind of all zeroed in on what's going on. But it's, it's wild to see people say it out loud in mainstream publications.

Because, like, you know, we. all have our Jones hats on and and then we realize that we're not the crazy ones. Yeah. It's nice, but. I just hope that these ideas start the ideas of Bitcoin and what Bitcoin represents and Bitcoin's role in this starts seeping into a lot of these conversations because they've definitely identified the problem. But we actually have a good solution.

to this problem. I would agree. I would echo that. I hope that's the case as well. We shall see. We shall see. Good news starting out. Space Cat won his trial against CSW.

So before I get to a little bit of the article, I just want to read a little bit of this article in relation to the Peter McCormack judgment. And it says UK High Judge Martin Chamberlain has ruled that Craig Wright, the Australian scientist, who claims to be a Bitcoin investor, Satoshi Nakamoto, advanced false evidence in his defamation case against Peter McCormack. Chamberlain, however, concluded that Wright had advanced a deliberately false case to the disinvitations from academic conferences.

Thus, the judge said there would be no injustice in awarding just one pound. So the reason I'm saying this, guys, is not one judge, not two judges. there's three judges in three separate jurisdictions and three separate countries that have all said the same thing that Craig Wright lied but I think this is the most consequential case hopefully this puts all this to bed it's I think it's going to definitely make it a lot harder for CSW to shut down dissenting speech through lawfare and check out this quote it says against the background the court believes that had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto in March 2019 reads the transcript.

Goes on to say in a situation where Wright has not succeeded in and nor does he wish to provide cryptographic evidence that can support his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto. The court believes that he must accept that there is a debate as to whether he is who he says he is. Hado not is acquitted of all claims for compensation and is not liable for damages related to the comments. The pseudonymous account made on Twitter. Wright has been ordered to compensate Hado Not to the tune of well-deserved, $348,000 and Hado Not is receiving that money at the bottom of a bear market. So shout out to you, Space Cat, well-deserved. You fought out this demon for a better part of, I don't know how many years now.

I'm glad that it has a happy ending, man. This guy is, I don't want to get you banned on. YouTube but yeah he's not a he's not a he's not a he's not a good person dude this is just messed up yeah yeah it's uh it was so nice to see this turn out and like i so i had spoken to and then hung out with had hotline not um in in norway and uh and yeah man like when he was telling me about what a nightmare this has been and you know it's like a family man and everything and he's talking about like we might we might lose

our house be out on the street and like with kids to take care of and this is what this sack of shit is doing to anybody that dare question that dare question the bullshit he's been spewing for years so you know I think it was pretty

pretty accurate in the comments here when somebody said can we now call fake tocia cunt? I mean, we could before, but especially now. Yes. Well, you said the things I wanted to say. Well, there you go.

Yeah, we don't censor here. Oh, man. Oh, man. Yes, you read my mind. Those are the words and the thoughts that I was thinking as well. Anyways, mining apocalypse. And I just want to preface this article came out October 26. The sixth margin squeeze how Bitcoin mining revenues evaporated over the past months.

Even though we are in the middle of a bare market, Bitcoin miners continue ramping up hash rate financed by massive equity raises. The hash rate ramp up has led the Bitcoin network to increase its mining difficulty on several occasions lately, and it currently sits at an all-time high. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin price hovering around the 2017 high of 20K, 71% below at 69 all-time high. Due to this combination of rising difficulty and the following Bitcoin price, miners dig out fewer and less valuable Bitcoin than ever before. And what did that result in? Yes, that's right. One of the largest Bitcoin, public Bitcoin miners in the world, won't be able to be making

payments due October and November, and that most likely will lead to the bankruptcy. Core Scientific is one of the world's largest Bitcoin miners of Bitcoin. Sorry, one of the largest miners of Bitcoin, warned that it might run out of cash by the end of the year and could seek relief through bankruptcy protection. Operating performance and liquidity has been severely impacted by the prolonged drop in the Bitcoin price. A rise in electricity cross, increased competition. Litigation with bankrupt Celsius, the Austin, Texas-based company sent in a U.S. Securities Exchange Commission filing on Thursday. Now here's the kicker Ben, and this is extremely painful. Core Scientific held 24 Bitcoins in a

approximately $26 million in cash as of Thursday. Here it is, Ben. That's compared with $1,051 Bitcoin. And about $29 million in cash as of September, the company set in a filing the shares, which traded as much as $14.32. Late last year, close at 22 cents. They tumbled 98% since the start of the year.

dude a thousand from a thousand bitcoin which is an ungodly amount like you are set for generations and generations generations down to 24 it's so bad i bet i bet we regularly like i'm just going to go out there and say it i imagine not that i ever ask but a good percentage of the guests that I have on why are we bullish from time to time have more Bitcoin than core scientific does now absolutely absolutely um wow okay that that stat from over a thousand to 24 and it said it that it had in September was that September of last year uh yeah dude he happened in a year I'm sorry I'm laughing. This is terrible, but holy crap.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Compared to 1,051 bitcoins and about $29.5 million in cash as of September, the company said. So. What's a couple months? Holy fuck. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Wow. So, okay, so I have a question for you here. Yes, sir. Because we've obviously seen a lot of downward pressure on the price. Typically, a lot of that coincides with minors capitulating and everything. But like reading this, it would appear that the capitulation like happened already. It's that they now have their day of reckoning of actually like somebody needs to buy up all their assets. Like they don't have any more Bitcoin to sell.

And so do you think that this is. Kind of what we're going to, we're going to see through maybe the end of the year and early next year is like these, like, quote unquote, capitulation events. But really, it's just like the reckoning after the capitulation when they don't have any more corn to sell. Yes. They raise a tremendous amount of money and use leverage to buy Bitcoin miners, right? And the bull market, it's a great idea, right? then the hash rate dropped. The problem, they raised that money already,

and they used that money to build out infrastructure and to buy Bitcoin miners. Problem happened, though, is that because of all those miners, all that additional hash rate, it pushed up the difficulty rate, which made mining less profitable, and it was a perfect storm

because the Bitcoin price fell at the same time. And they got absolutely destroyed. And if you've noticed, man, the hash rate keeps going up. Why? What are they going to do with those miners, but keep them plugged in? And if we go back to 2017, 2018, the blow off top happened December 2017, but it took nine to 10 months. It was November of 2018 before the hash rate started to fall back down again.

So this is a catastrophe. History is repeating itself, but the reason that this is so much more public, Ben, is because this involves public companies. So it makes the headlines. And you had, well, do you, should this be, this is an excellent segue into something else you're going to touch on if I'm not mistaken. I hope, I hope we're in sync, Ben, but is this what you're talking about? I think so, yes. Yes. So, good news.

So also another thing, guys, I got into Bitcoin mining 2017, 2018. Sorry, 2016, popped off 2017, and I got absolutely wrecked. I had to go back to my Fiat job 2018. I'll tell you this. The miners that started businesses and started mining in 2018 and survived until the next bowl made a killing. Because you have to look at mining for what it is. It's a leverage long. So if you want to get into Bitcoin mining, I think I told you the same advice, Ben.

Right now is the time. You just have to survive. Anyways, there's a silver lining to all this, Ben, which is, this is a new, this came out October 24th. It's funny how these things just come out, like, so many days close to each other. So publicly traded Bitcoin mining firms account for 25% of total Bitcoin hash rate up from 10% a year ago. That's terrible. You don't want that, right? Because we know publicly traded companies are vulnerable to government intervention and government coercion.

So it is up 25% of the Bitcoin hash rate. It's public miners, but we just saw the largest public miners basically declare a hash rate, I mean declare bankruptcy. I want more independent Bitcoin miners. I want more individuals mining Bitcoin. And I also think that stratum B2 that is going to allow the individual miner to pick that finds the block to pick and choose what transactions are included in Bitcoin blocks. I'm very excited for all that.

Because as we enter the next five to 10 years and the state keeps pushing back and they try to co-opt the Bitcoin network to censor just like, you know, the old system. The more decentralization, the better. The less public miners, the better. So I'm very glad this flush out is happening. But I feel bad for anybody who's holding core scientific stock. Yeah, that's too bad. But yeah, I agree. like you don't want to see the publicly traded mining firms accounting for that much of a large percentage.

But I think part of it that we'll see is, again, we're still very much in Fiat land. And man, some of these miners, some of these publicly trading traded miners are behaving as such, right? like these massive like leveraged plays to buy your infrastructure like it's it's yeah obviously you're going to get burned when you're when you're working in that way and those that just kept their heads down and and worked at it and were the most efficient like this is the beautiful part here let's say so they file for bankruptcy they've got all of this hash that now gets bought up by the ones that were efficient enough to actually survive. And I mean, that's a fantastic thing. I hope, I hope that some of those A-6s end up in the hands of individual

home miners, perhaps. That would be fantastic. Hit up Kaboom Raps. Racks. Take a look. Maybe there'll be some deals. There's bound to be some deals. So yeah, I'm very excited to start down my mining journey. I got my black box just recently and my first ASIC shall be arriving this week, I believe. Steve's going to swing by the house and bring me an M30

plus. Oh, very nice. Very nice. But yes, guys, you want to get into Bitcoin mining now is the time. Don't expect to be super profitable. Just survive. Yeah.

It's moving on to the big news of today. This is the, this isn't. Um, which wants to make it easier. It wants to make it easier to seize crypto without criminal charges.

And our friends at No BS Bitcoin did a great job at summarizing it so that I wouldn't have to read the entire. I did read the entire article, but I don't want to make you guys sit through all that. Anyways, very deep in a 61 page report by the U.S. Attorney General, the Biden administration called for a dramatic expansion in the federal government's ability to seize and keep cryptocurrency. If enacted, the proposal changed would bolster both criminal forfeiture, which requires a conviction to permanently confiscate property, as well as civil forfeiture, which doesn't require conviction or even criminal charges to be

filed. Notably, the report release was coupled with the announcement of a new digital assets coordinator network. This nationwide network is staffed with more than 150 prosecutors who will be trained on drafting civil and criminal forfeiture actions. Since fiscal 2014, the FBI Secret Service and Homeland Security investigations have collectively seized almost $680 million worth of Bitcoin and shitcoins, valued at the time of seizure with hundreds of still active investigations involving digital assets. Under administration or non-judicial forfeiture, the seizing agency, not a judge, decides what property should be forfeited.

The federal government can use administrative forfeiture to take almost anything aside from real estate and property value at more than $500,000. But yes, they still want to change that. That $500,000 limit currently applies to cryptocurrency. But the Attorney General wants to lift that $500,000 cap for cryptocurrency and other digital assets. Even if Congress refuses to act, thanks to law enacted last year, the Secretary of Treasury could simply end the cap by adopting new regulation. I'm going to leave it on this picture. Unbelievable.

Okay, so I, if people are unfamiliar with civil asset forfeiture in the U.S., it's fucking insane. Like the way that it works, if you, if somebody wants to accuse you of a crime, then you have the benefit of being declared innocent until proven guilty. But if you have

property that they indicate was part of a crime, they can then seize your property and indicate that, yes, it was involved in crime. And then it's up to you on your own dime to prove the innocence of the property because it's not human, doesn't have human rights. So it doesn't matter. And so there were instances, and this is just like entirely outside of Bitcoin, but like there's instances where people, they'll be driving, they'll have cash, maybe they're going to buy a vehicle or something, and they'll get pulled over and the police officer will be like, oh, do you have any like cash or anything like that on you in the car? And that's like a probing question. And then they'll, they'll claim, oh, I smelled something or whatever. And so you have $5,000 with

a cash. You said it's for a car, but I detect the presence of marijuana. So I believe that this cash is going to be used in a crime to purchase. illegal drugs. And so I'm seizing this asset. It will be up to you to prove the innocence of your assets of which at that point, it's going to cost you more to actually go through the court process of proving that. And so a lot of people just, they just throw their hands up and they're like, well, I just got extorted for five grand or whatever is taken away. This is this exact same kind of thing for Bitcoin. And I could very much see them trying to pull the kind of crap where it's like, oh,

there was, uh, you know, like just on chain analysis of like, oh, this like six hops back mingled with this other coin that was implicated here, which like, you know, a few hops, like a single hop, there's no direct association. But nonetheless, I could see them utilizing tactics like that. to just confiscate people's coins where they just have no idea what to do and they it's not even worth them trying. So the answer here is make it impossible to seize your coins. If you're worried about something like this, get the, I mean, the simplest thing is to enact

a passphrase on a regular hardware wallet and maybe have a decoy amount in the regular non-passphrase wallet. So that's one simple solution. But the other more robust solution would be a geographically dispersed multi-sig, right? You create a multi-sig, two or three keys. You have one and then you have other keys elsewhere. And even if somebody kicks in your door and says your coins are, you know, civil asset forfeiture, we're taking your coins.

While they get a single hardware wallet, they don't got shit. They can't take anything. Not only that, but the single key, there's no indication that it's even part of a multi-sig. So harden your stack against civil asset forfeiture, and then they have to play by the law of the land.

It's not take your shit and ask questions later. It's you've got to go through a legal process to prove, that you actually are have any say in what happens to my stack so yeah a hundred percent and you know and this is and it's disgusting because this is an unelected if the treasury is appointed right dictating if the the government the state that has a monopoly on violence is allowed to just take your stuff as they see fit without charge charging you with a crime. And this is why something like Bitcoin is so important. Because now you can memorize 12 words in your mind. Right. Now you can have a cold card. The cold

card has a destruction pin. You could pop put in destruction pin hand over the the the brick cold card. Right. He's like, there you go. And really Biden, I was reading a comment. Freud and slip. But it moves the balance of power, right? Where the collective, the state, always had the advantage. And now with Bitcoin, if you properly learn how to secure your Bitcoin in self-custody using PTC sessions tutorials, it moves that balance of power back into the individual's favor, right? And if you have millions upon millions of people taking Bitcoin into self-custody,

dude, there's nothing they could do. They don't have enough cops. They don't have enough people to go door to door and say, hey, give me that. You know, so this is the game changer, right? Is the ability for now a human being to store their wealth in their mind or on a metal seed plate and bury that and multi-sig it and put it in different countries? And that changes everything. Yeah. Can you just scroll down a little bit?

They said something about what was the thing I was going to? The can use administrative forfeiture. general they want to lift the cap even if they refuse to act what the hell was it? I don't know it's I don't I'm losing my train of thought that's right we can move on but nonetheless secure your corn make it seizure resistant and then that at least gives you the benefit of them having to play by by the law because again oh that's the point I was going to make where they're saying that the agencies get to decide whether or not it's legal or they should seize your assets. It doesn't even go through a court. And the problem with that,

and same with regular civil asset forfeiture, is a lot of times there's like an expiry date on like basically how long you have to defend your property. And at that point, it's just deemed property of the state. So like you'll see like little, you know, like county sheriff's offices and they've done a ton of this civil asset forfeiture and they make bank on it and it sits there for X amount of time and then all of a sudden it just goes

into buying them tanks like all this kind like you see them just they're rolling in dough because they're just rolling around pulling people over and taking their cash so and shaking them down so yeah um you know if it's crazy to me that it's not so I mean it is painfully obvious the conflict of interest in the agency itself deeming whether or not they should be allowed to take your shit and then they get to benefit from taking your shit. Dude, it's absolutely absurd. And man, I'm just happy Bitcoin exists and I think that it's going to change things for the better. Anymore's more positive news, Ben. 40 million cash app users can now receive Bitcoin Lightning payments integrates BIP 21 Unified.

QR codes. Absolutely amazing. And now I know you guys, a lot of you guys are thinking, it's like, oh, this is noise. No. You remember what Cash App, what, remember Cash App's performance and popularity and the sales of Bitcoin that they had? Forced PayPal, Venmo, and Robin Hood all to offer Bitcoin on their app. It also forced PayPal and Robinhold, Robin Hood to add withdraws. What do you think this is going to force? I love free market man. It's going to force them to add lightning to stay competitive and keep market share. And that is the signal with this. Yes. Also unified QR codes.

Thank the Lord. Can we please get this in all of the wallets? So I give Moon Wallet plenty of praise. for having a singular balance while being able to use on-chain and lightning. But the issue is still, there's still thought that goes into receiving for a new user of the tabs of Bitcoin and Lightning.

But to have a singular QR code that can be scanned, and it's just whatever you're accepting, I'm receiving, whatever you're sending, it doesn't matter. And this is the place where I want to get to where it's just, I just have a wallet and it just executes transactions in the most efficient, cost effective way possible. Or perhaps there's a toggle switch for privacy or I'll toggle switch for advanced settings if I want to do something specific. But on the base interaction with a brand

new user, they shouldn't have a clue, whether it's on chain or lightning, it should just be easy. And this is what I think this spurs on. And I, to your free market analysis there, I think that this encourages everybody to start looking at and considering BIP 21. And I like that. Hell yeah. This is, this is, this is what winning feels like, Ben. And it's, it's glorious to see. But going back to the state, fighting back, guys, bear with me. I'm going I do this very quickly. Two Chinese intelligence officers charged with obstruction of justice and scheme to bribe U.S. government employee with $61,000 in Bitcoin.

Defendants paid $61,000 in Bitcoin bribes to double agent under control of the FBI to obtain internal files and other non-public information related to the ongoing investigation prosecution of a PRC-based company. PRC stands for People's Republic of China. By the way, the PRC-based company is Huawei. If convicted, oh man, Guan Chun He faces up to 60 years of imprisonment,

and Zhang Wang faces up to 20 years of imprisonment. Now, again, this is noise on the surface. But guys, remember what the Treasury did. They used, and specifically in the tornado cash sanction, the People's Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, as the justification to sanction open source software. I suspect this is going to be used as justification,

because check this out. Chinese spies used wasabi wallet coin join to pay Bitcoin bribes to FBI double agent. I'm going to go turn back and look at the words used by the Treasury's official announcement. U.S. Treasury sanctions notorious virtual currency. mixer. Ladies and gentlemen, they will go after mixers. This includes wasabi, this includes samurai, this includes coin joint. They will try to convince you that privacy is dangerous. In fact, you can't have freedom without privacy. And they've been very successful because this blog post resulted in over 61. Right now, 64% of a theory.

validators actively sanctioned actually actually actively censoring for the office of asset control which is part of the U.S. Treasury. Luckily for us, Bitcoin is actually decentralized and will succeed where Bitcoin, where Ethereum failed because of Ethereum's move of proof of stake and because of Ethereum's centralization. Yeah. Yeah, I do worry about them going after, you know, open source software. I think that's a terrible precedent to set. I think there's, in the way that Bitcoin functions versus Ethereum, there's, from a technical

perspective, it's going to be a bit more difficult. Reason being that Ethereum is an account-based system. So you receive any amount of Bitcoin to an account. It's like a specific amount. Oh, it went from here to here. This account to this account. Whereas Bitcoin is inputs and outputs. And the inputs are destroyed and it creates new outputs.

So it's like smelting. It's like, again, you can picture if you have two half cups of water and you pour them into a single cup and then split them in half again, who has whose water? It's not it's not cut and dry, right? like, yes, there's going to be molecules of each half cup of water intermingled, but it doesn't, that's not how Bitcoin functions. And so I don't know how this goes, but there's also tools just like pay join, like pay to endpoint. And this is just a mere function of how Bitcoin works. And you can't censor that.

can't prevent somebody from taking their own UTXOs in a certain way that makes it look differently on chain. You can't dictate, well, you can't use larger UTXOs than you need in this transaction. That's not allowed. That's, again, that's not how Bitcoin functions. And that's something that you cannot stop. Collaborative spends, you cannot stop. You might be able to target specific. specific software companies. And yeah, there's a target there. But again, if it's open source, I don't know. I feel like those tools are going to keep on coming back.

And the nature of Bitcoin on chain, it's difficult. It's a difficult one. Nonetheless, then they fight you. And they fight you. And that's exactly where we are. But I think then they fight you and then you win, right? Yes. So it's going to be a bumpy road in the meantime. Yeah, man. It's going to get interesting. But nonetheless, use the tools, guys. Learn them. Be aware, be privy, and make your stack seizure proof. That's all I'll say. Amen to that.

Yeah. Cheers, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you. for informing us all on what the hell's been going on. And shall we do it again? Absolutely. I love this. I will see you next week. And hey, while you're here,

I'm going to see you in a couple of weeks here. Yes, sir. Pacific Bitcoin. I'll be seeing you down there. I'll chat about it in a minute. But I'm very excited to see you in person yet again. So yeah, man.

Have a great evening. Yep. Guys, this was your simply sessions. Later, man. Awesome. And everybody, thank you so much for being here. Of course, I've got a few extra things. I want to touch on here before we head out.

So I'm just going to give my screen a little share. We were talking some shit about Fictoshi. And I just wanted to end. Also, I was saying that I was out of town. So I was out of town for Hoddlewine put on by Bitcoin Charlotte. Jacob and Liz Parrish, thank you so much for having me down. Not only me, but my wife came along with me. And it was an absolute blast.

There was a hell of a Halloween party. There's me and my wife. Pay no attention to my name tag there. Just don't, don't even look at it. It's not even a thing. Don't worry. Anyways, it was a good party. I thought it was a lot of fun.

Actually, thoroughly enjoyed it. There were great talks. There was a great dinner put on by the Beef Initiative. Texas Slim is an absolute legend. Got to hang out with Anders and Pubby from Toxic Happy Hour, and we did a live show in the lobby of the hotel. Lots of great people that I got to meet down there. So very, very grateful for my time down.

If you ever get a chance to make it out, perhaps next year to Hotterween, it's a banger. Also got to hang out with Guy Swan and his brother for a little bit. bit too. Always great to see them. J.C. Crown. There were just, yeah, a ton of people. I'm missing some, I'm sure. But nonetheless, it was a good time. Shout out Bitcoin Charlotte and Liz and Jake. So we were just saying Pacific Bitcoin, it's common. It's a couple weeks out. I'm going to be down in L.A. I'm very excited for it. I'm now starting to get amped up. I'm in the mood. I'm ready to get down there. There's some awesome stuff going on. I'm going to be primarily in the

swan dome. There's going to be like a main stage and then there's going to be kind of like a more interactive swan dome area with panels and stuff as well and like contests and I don't know trivia. There's going to be all demos, all kinds of stuff in there. So if you're trying to find me, there's a good chance for a good chunk of it. I will be in the swan dome. But nonetheless, should be a lot of fun. I think I got a I got a code for this. So anyways, if you're looking for cheaper tickets, just use code sessions, and that will get you some amount of money. I'm so terrible. That will reduce the price of your ticket materially, is my belief.

Anyways, yeah, for sure, check it out. I will be down there. I just covered, maybe I'll do this other one, since I'm going to be in L.A. Yeah, I'm doing a cold card deep dive. So if you're going to be in LA for Pacific Bitcoin, this is the Saturday. So the Pacific ends on Friday evening. I'm there Saturday running this bad boy. It's going to be four hours long from 1 to 5 p.m.

And it's a cold card deep dive basically from setup to everything, doing air gap transactions, recovering your wallet, some of the deeper, more advanced features. You'll be an expert walking out of there. So anyways, if you're curious about that, BTCSessions.ca, I've got an events page and you can grab tickets there. Only 15 spots total. So slide in there before they're sold out. And one of those 15 people will win a block clock micro. I'm giving away one for free to one of those people.

So if you want to potentially win a block clock micro and also if you want to be a cold card expert. come on down. But speaking of that, this is a clip from I just made a video on the block clock, how to use it. I did both the micro and the mini. The mini is actually the bigger one. And just kind of walk through setup, how to choose all the metrics that show on the screen, how to interact with it, all of the little settings and everything like that. And then I also covered how to check and audit your open dimes on the thing, which is super awesome. and how to update the firmware, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, if you've been trying to figure out how to use your block clock,

then check that out. That's on the channel. And hopefully, Stacey and Max Kaiser kept on bugging me to make something because they're trying to figure out there. So anyways, Stacey, there you go. What else I got for you here? This is cool. I just wanted to mention the last couple things here.

Dan Gold put out this tweet, two lightning channels, established in one Sparrow wallet pay join transaction. Sparrow is now a lightning wallet. So I want to clarify what's happening here, but it's super interesting. So normally when creating a lightning channel, you as an individual effectively create a two of two multisig. You have one key and the person on the other side of the lightning channel has the other key. And you both have to be online to establish this and establish a channel. But you can't do really other actions in there.

It's difficult to do. So what this guy did is he took some Bitcoin that he had and he split it. He took back change. He paid for the fee of the transaction. But he also took two smaller amounts of Bitcoin and simultaneously created two lightning channels all from the same transaction. So this meant that his change was coming back to him. His fee went to the miners. And then simultaneously, he sent what would have been two regular transactions.

But there's a pause in there where the individual receiving the transaction is actually able to take that information, swap it out because he's sending a partially signed Bitcoin transaction. so it's not officially broadcast. And then they swap in a different receiving address, which would become the two of two multisig and provide back enough information to create that multi-sig. So it's kind of like it calls back and forth, is my understanding. What this could result in eventually, number one, the on-chain benefits and kind of streamlining

and making efficient the creation of channels while doing other things at the same time is great. But down the line, it will also allow, on the privacy front, which we've been talking about, people to contribute their own amounts into this transaction, making it collaborative, making it difficult to decipher on-chain while establishing actual lightning channels. Who contributed what into the channel? Who took what change? Whose wallet is whose?

Whose address is whose? That will make shit very confusing for on-chain analysis. And that's great to hear. So anyways, I thought that was really cool. Umbril had a big update today. Um, today, yesterday. Anyways, a bunch of different updates. One thing that's really nice is it'll let you know if your SD card is, is on its way out if it's starting to fail. It'll just warn you and say, hey, you should replace your SD card, which all you need to do then is just put the firmware on a new SD card, shut off your umbril and swap it out. All of your important information. is held on the hard drive, not the SD card. So that's good. Now, there's something a bit more controversial in here. They're kind of opening up the app store for people to be able to create new app stores, upload apps without having a centralized point that tells them what to do.

While this could be positive and encouraged like a bigger market of apps, it also means that you as a user need to be very conscientious in and around what apps are you loading and what are you doing with them? because let's be honest, there could be some malicious apps in there. So much like when you're downloading an app onto your computer or phone, you can't just be willy-nilly download frigging everything and do everything and trust everything. You need to do a little bit of due diligence. So if you're unsure what something is, you got to think about it a little bit.

You got to go online and say, oh, who's used this? Is it open source? like all of those types of things need to be considerations. And I think that's something that comes with trying to make an open ecosystem like this. Some people will think it's okay and say, well, you know, do your own research. And others will say this is going to be a vulnerability for some. And some will assume that everything's safe. It's not.

You got to do some thinking. So anyways, that's that. And finally. tomorrow. Why are we bullish? Swan takeover. Very excited. Brady, Kristen, Alex, John. Yeah, we got a panel of five tomorrow and all the team from Swan, they're going to come with reasons for being bullish. So this is obviously an honor of Pacific Bitcoin coming up. But we're all going to bring our reasons for being bullish. We're very excited about it. Should be a good time. So we'll see you here tomorrow at 6 p.m. Eastern time for Why Are We Bullish and our Swan Takeover. With that, I'm going to wrap up. Thank you guys for joining me. Go subscribe to Simply Bitcoin if you're not already.

Nico's awesome. Him and Opti cover the news six days a week. This is just a taste. It's just a little taste of what they do. So go give them a subscription on YouTube and make sure you're hitting their content all the time. They do some good spaces too. So anyways, tune in, get your dose of simply Bitcoin. Of course, if you want to help the show in another way, you can like, subscribe, share.

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hit the tip button you'll be greeted with a lightning invoice or if you tap to the right a regular Bitcoin QR code. With that, I am out. Have yourselves a wonderful day or evening. See you guys next time for your daily session.